Well, summer’s over, and the kids are going back to school. Thinking of this momentous time brought to mind Dear Lemon Lima, directed by Suzi Yoonessi, which screened earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival. The story is disarmingly simple: A sensitive young girl suffers a breakup at the hands of the eerily businesslike, Über-intellectual boy with whom she will be working in an ice-cream truck during the summer. He focuses on being a businessman; she dreams of finding love again. The real revelation here is young star Ellen Hornberger, who manages to pull off, in ten short little minutes, one of the most affecting and poised performances by a 13-year-old we’ve seen in quite some time. IMDb tells us she has a small role in the upcoming Julie Taymor opus Across the Universe. Our heart tells us she’s gonna be a star.
Director Yoonessi is currently preparing to turn this short into a feature film; you can learn more about the project at her production site here. —Bilge Ebiri
